White Wasteland, Jeff Kirkham [ebook reader with highlight function TXT] 📗

pandemonium—hundreds of souls shrieked and clamored. So much death and misery in one place at one time threatened to overwhelm him, but Jeff tuned it out. He channeled the chaos and used it to focus himself.

Another intruder, this one a beast of a man—stepped up to Jeff with a ferocious leer. The man towered over Jeff’s five-foot seven frame. He could see it in the man’s eyes; this was the kind of man who would murder to keep his family alive. He could relate, but it changed nothing.

Jeff’s powerful build and corded shoulder muscles should’ve given the man pause, but it was easy to pass Jeff off with a quick glance as a man small-in-stature, with a bit of a middle-aged belly. Only a careful eye would see that Jeff had logged tens of thousands of hours lifting weights and training for personal combat. The hulking intruder had the advantage over Jeff by fifty pounds and three inches of reach. The big man leered.

Jeff pulled the kitchen knife from his belt and flicked it forward toward the man’s left hand, readying his tomahawk in his right. Only one man-in-ten-thousand had studied bladed combat. Jeff believed this man was no match for him, but he wouldn’t take it for granted.

The big man had a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire that extended his reach even farther.

Jeff rehearsed the counters to a baseball bat in his mind: stay outside the arc until moving in for a kill. Take advantage of the follow-through. Sucker the swing, then bite.

As expected, the big guy poked the end of the bat at Jeff a couple times and then wound up for a crushing blow. Jeff rolled backwards at the waist when it came. The bat swooshed past his face at full speed. The power of the missed swing carried the bat around to the man’s weak side. Jeff rocked forward at the hips and smashed the back of the man’s hand with the sharpened beard of his tomahawk.

No need to get creative. The easy win is usually the best win.

The big man’s eyes flicked from malice to shock. His grip on the bat loosened, yet he didn’t drop it despite the blood pouring down the grip. His pinky dangled by a thin strip of flesh.

Jeff took a breath, checked his six and stepped back as the man gathered himself, panting like a wounded dog.

Jeff needed to get moving. The battle for the main driveway wasn’t his biggest concern. Jeff could see that his men were winning control over the central corridor. His bigger concern was the women and children in the bunker. He needed to put this raging bull on the ground and move on.

Jeff feinted to the left, dodged right and hooked the bat with the tomahawk. He whipped downward and hauled the bat over to the weak side. The big man reacted slower this time, opening up for a split second. With a lightening-quick jab, Jeff sunk four inches of the kitchen knife between the man’s ribs. His expression went from shock to wonder, only now coming to the conclusion that he might die.

Jeff couldn’t leave this combatant standing on the field, even wounded. Crippled, he might still injure or kill one of Jeff’s men. But Jeff was wheezing. The dump of adrenaline no longer held back the fatigue that threatened to drag him down. He was running out of steam fast.

Reversing his feint, Jeff parried again with the kitchen knife. The befuddled man whipped to his weak side to protect the new wound. Instead of following through, Jeff came around with the tomahawk, stepped inside the reach of the bat and buried it in the man’s neck. Jeff stepped through, brushing the man’s side. He jerked the tomahawk free. Blood exploded from the deep gash and the big man dropped to his knees. The bat fell to the snow.

Jeff’s own consciousness grew cloudy around the edges. Every breath felt like cold fire in his aching throat and lungs. He put a hand on Gayland’s shoulder and pulled him toward the bunkhouse.

A mass of scattered intruders flooded the grounds. They raced from one building to another in search of food. Like Roman armies of old, Jeff’s men knotted up in groups and fought in phalanxes. But the women and children had no such training or protection. While his men were winning the fight, they might lose still lose their families.

A man blocked his way to the bunkhouse. Jeff gathered himself for another round of mortal combat. Jeff had killed or disabled perhaps twenty men and women, but adrenaline could no longer sustain him. No amount of steady breathing would hold back the fog that threatened to envelope him.

The man facing him was nothing special, except that desperate men always were. He carried a hunting knife and a trashcan lid as a shield. Jeff launched himself at the man with a fury, beating the trashcan lid over and over with the tomahawk until the man cowered below it. Jeff punched through the lid with the spike end of his tomahawk. A severed finger fell to the snow and the man howled. Jeff stepped around the shield and stabbed the kitchen knife into the man’s ear with a ferocious side-hammer.

The burst of violence brought the curtain down on Jeff too. His lungs clawed at the air for oxygen. His old wounds brayed and his cells went watery all at once. His ears rang, like a dial tone in his head.

The fog took him. Jeff pitched face-first into the snow.

Emily Ross was on a training patrol when the Prairie Fire call had gone out. She and her Quick Reaction Force raced through the forest back to the Homestead on foot. The Quick Reaction Force, or QRF, had been formed to bring assault troops quickly to bear when the lesser-trained perimeter guards faced a threat. On the way back to the Homestead, they’d been ordered by command to use firearms only when absolutely necessary. She was